


Blood Lines

by FreyaOdin



Category: Pentatonix, Superfruit
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Angst, Enemies to Lovers, Friends to Enemies, Humor, M/M, Magic, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, Mpreg, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-07 05:59:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15212720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreyaOdin/pseuds/FreyaOdin
Summary: Killing a rival archmage is relatively easy; Mitch's father taught him that.Killing a rival archmage he swore to Magic herself that he'd never harm?Far. More. Difficult.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to [ Ehcimocs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ehcimocs) for the beta! More of her work can be found on her [ wattpad account](https://www.wattpad.com/user/Ehcimocs).
> 
> This chapter contains minor character death. It's very AU, which generally helps further separate characters from their real life counterparts, but heads up.

**So I saw this Tumblr prompt on Twitter a few weeks back:**

  

 

**And so here we go:**

  

 

**One**

Mitch is supposed to be in their chambers studying. He’s supposed to remain sequestered so as not to be influenced by their hosts’ backward ways and heretical rituals. He’s supposed to be writing an essay on the superiority of pure weaving over conjuration.  
  
He’s not doing any of those things because hiding behind the bannister of a balcony, watching his parents try to hammer out a peace treaty and trade agreement with their most-hated rivals, is both fascinating and ridiculous.   
  
Also, his mother never gets to scold him for being petty again. Not after the shady-ass not-compliment she just paid Consort Richard on the cut of his robes.   
  
“Are they still squabbling?” asks a weary-sounding voice behind him.   
  
Mitch startles because he didn’t even hear Scott approaching. He cancels his eavesdropping weave and makes a mental note to tweak it next time so it doesn’t completely override his natural awareness. “Yep. My mother just simultaneously impugned your father’s fashion sense and waist size, and your mother just managed to insult five generations of my father’s lineage.”   
  
Scott sighs. “This is  _stupid_.”   
  
Not an elegant or diplomatic assessment, but accurate. “They’re never going to agree to share the border ley lines, are they?”   
  
“Probably not.” Scott sits down on the floor beside him, folding up his long, gangly limbs until he’s seated cross-legged in a far more compact space than Mitch would have thought possible. Then he raises his right palm and mutters in the Hoyings’ ancestral magespeak, so completely unlike that of the Grassis. A small puff of fog forms over his hand, condensing into a water sprite before Mitch’s eyes. “Can you fetch us some cheese, oatcakes, and some of that chilled vineberry juice, please?”   
  
The sprite bobs its head and disintegrates back into the fog that formed it, the requested food appearing on a tray on the floor in front of them a moment later, complete with a glistening jug and two chalices.   
  
Mitch is grateful Scott not only thought to provide a snack, but also remembered to make it wheat-free. However, he’ll never get over how fucking weird Hoying magic is.   
  
“Why not just summon the food itself rather than conjuring someone else to do it?”   
  
Scott’s already stuffed a hunk of bread and cheese into his mouth and has to quickly pour and swill down some juice so he can answer. “Because we politely ask avatars of Lady Magic for her assistance, rather than pridefully demanding that she provide for us?”   
  
Mitch rolls his eyes. “She gifted us with our powers so that we could provide for ourselves. Believing that she or her avatars must personally intervene for every little spell you want to cast is what’s prideful.”

Scott frowns. “Is that how you see it? You don’t believe yourself above requiring her blessing?”

“Of course not.” Mitch breaks off a piece of bread, topping it with some of the Vescan cheddar he can’t get at home for obvious reasons. “We believe ourselves not important enough to constantly demand her attention.”

“Huh,” Scott says. He takes another sip of his juice, staining his lips a brighter pink. Mitch has no idea why he notices that. “I don’t think I agree with that perspective, but maybe we’re not as different as we think.”

Maybe not. Mitch tilts his chin towards the negotiations happening downstairs. “Think we can convince them of that?

Scott peers through the banister, no doubt taking in the deepening purple of his mother’s face and the sneer on Mitch’s dad’s. “Not a chance.”

 

***

 

Two days later, diplomacy is unravelling at the seams. Mitch’s father is ranting every second they’re in private about Archmage Constance's unrelenting hubris and unnatural magic, his ire reaching the point where the candles flare whenever he gets close to them as his emotions stir up the power he can normally keep in check.

Mitch makes a brief attempt at suggesting that perhaps it’s more of a difference in perspective than pure hubris. His explanation that maybe Constance sees her proxied requests to alter the weave as respectful to Lady Magic, rather than attention-seeking, does not go over well.

“Wherever did you come up with that, Mitchell?” his mother asks, in a mild voice that Mitch is in no way stupid enough to fall for. “I  _know_ it’s not in the texts your tutor provided.”

No, because his tutor is so old and set in his ways that Mitch expects find him fossilized at his desk any day now, hopefully soon. However, Mitch can’t exactly confess that he’s been sneaking around with Heir Hoying for the past week, so instead he stutters out, “Uh, just something I’ve been thinking about?”

“Think about something less blasphemous,” his father says. Or rather, Archmage Michael says, because that was most definitely an order from his sovereign and not a suggestion from his dad.

“Yes, magus,” Mitch replies, quickly excusing himself to ‘study’.

He meets Scott out behind the stables as they’d planned, and follows him to an empty side garden so they can talk.

“We’re going back to war,” Scott says without preamble once they’re alone. “My mother’s one insult, real or perceived, away from throwing you all out and declaring the ceasefire null and void.”

Mitch shakes his head, not because he disagrees, but because the whole thing is so wasteful and predictable. Scott’s initial assessment is still true. “This is  _stupid._ ”

Scott sighs. “They’ll go back to trying to kill each other, our peoples will go back to dying in waves for twenty feet of ground at a time, and no one will fully benefit from the border leys.”

“Promise me that when we’re in charge, we won’t continue this bullshit.”

“I promise. It probably won’t be that easy, but...” Scott pauses, head cocked to the side. “What if we forced it?”

“What?”

“We could make a blood pact. Swear an oath in front of the Lady, each promising to do the other no harm.”

Interesting. “What would be the punishment for breaking it? Death?”

Scott stares at him, clearly pondering the question. “I don’t want to drop dead if I step on your toe or something. I’m clumsy as fuck.”

Fair point with those long limbs he hasn’t grown into yet. Then again, Mitch isn’t much better. “What if the punishment was the same harm reflected back? Bruised toe for bruised toe, mortal wound for mortal wound?”

Scott nods. “That’s reasonable. Now?”

No time like the present, especially when two angry archmages could start blasting spells at each other any second, sending everyone scurrying for cover.

Scott’s already started, muttering in his strange tongue and greeting the fire sprite it conjures him. The sprite holds a knife as big as she is, promptly slashing through the palm of Scott’s hand. Mitch winces, but summons his own blade, directing it over his palm to mirror Scott’s wound with a flick of the fingers of his other hand.

Ow. Ow ow ow. Mitch is unfond of pain and this is  _painful_.

But it’s no worse than what Scott feels, and anyway there’s no time to complain, because Scott is reaching out and Mitch has to clasp his hand, letting their blood mingle together. The wind picks up and Mitch can feel the magic gathering around them, sweeping in along the ancestral ley lines of Castle Hoying, investing itself in the oath that the heirs of two different archmage lines are making to each other.

 “I, Scott, Heir Hoying, heir apparent of Constance, Archmage of Vesca, speaker of magic granted my forebearers in ancient times, do swear to never harm Mitch, Heir Grassi, on the honor of the Lady and on pain of equal harm returned upon me, for as long as we both shall live.”

 A large being flashes into existence behind Scott, tall and strong with birdlike wings spreading out from its shoulders. It’s translucent, but with the sparksight that marked Mitch as Heir Grassi from birth, he can see that it’s pulsing with magical power. In the next second, the being’s energy flares and condenses, blasting through Scott’s body, through their joined hands, and through Mitch’s chest as well. He staggers under the sheer force of it, startled yet impressed by its unfamiliar wildness.

But the magic feels unbalanced. Unfulfilled. Scott’s staring at him, blue eyes shining with the power he’s holding at bay.

He won’t be able to hold it forever; Mitch has to do his part.

“I, Mitch, Heir Grassi, heir apparent of Michael, Archmage of Ananassa, weaver of magic granted my forebearers in ancient times, do swear to never harm Scott, Heir Hoying, on the honor of the Lady and on pain of equal harm returned upon me, for as long as we both shall live.”

His own power stirs behind him, woven spells swirling into place in ordered rows, parallel and perpendicular and everything in between, pulsing with a strength equal to Scott’s own. He lets it gather and grow for a moment and then sends it forward, sieving it through his own being, through their bloody hands, and through Scott’s body before letting it dissipate into the surrounding ether from whence it came.

The magic flares again, all of it together, streaking out along the leys of Vesca, spreading across the disputed borderlands, and continuing throughout Ananassa and beyond before collapsing in on itself, dormant and calm once more.

The last thing Mitch sees are Scott’s eyes rolling back in his head as he falls, pulling their bloodied hands apart. The last thing he hears, as he falls to the floor as well, is a distant female voice whispering, “Witnessed and accepted.”

 

***

 

It turns out angry archmages and their spouses get even angrier when their offspring are found unconscious and in close proximity, covered in blood, each having expelled enough magic to keep a sizeable town burning throughout an entire winter.

Mitch doesn’t wake until they’re miles away, his mother working to keep the servants, advisors, guards, and the weaves of the swift-carriage calm, his father powering a shield protecting all of the above from the army of vengeful daemons harrying them home.

Mitch tries explaining what really happened to his father, but he’s too incensed -- and busy -- to hear it. He’s convinced Scott tried to assassinate Mitch, under the guise of befriending him, and that only his immediate counter-attack prevented Mitch’s death. Which of course led to Constance protecting her own heir and lands. Outnumbered on enemy leys, surrounded by enemy troops, the Grassis were forced to flee.

It’s only after they finally arrive home, theoretically safe on their leys and behind the centuries-old wards of their ancestral lands, when an eight-foot tall seraph appears in a puff of smoke in Mitch’s bedroom and tries to decapitate him with a glowing blue sword, that Mitch begins to suspect his father might be right.

 

***

 

The war intensifies over the next two years, with frequent skirmishes along the borderlands, the disputed leys falling briefly under Vescan control before being retaken by Ananassan troops only to be lost again days later. It’s all foolish and wasteful and Mitch still has hope that Scott meant what he said.

He tries several times to send a message to him, but between his own family’s spy wards and whatever protections the Hoyings have up, it isn’t easy. Most of his letters end up back on his desk in an instant, charred smoking piles of ash all that remain of his entreaties.

He doesn’t think he’s alone. Several times he sees tiny water sprites flying towards his bedroom casements, only to splatter each and every time like insects under a swatter in the face of his father’s wards.

He finally believes himself successful when the latest of his notes isn’t immediately returned. He impatiently waits for whatever Scott’s reply will be, having figured out a way to open a hole in the wards just large enough to let in a small sprite. Still relying on the wards’ intent charms, obviously. He’s not completely stupid and he well remembers the seraph with the sword.

A reply does come two days later, but it’s not a tiny water sprite. It’s not even a well-armed seraph. It’s a full-fledged fucking  _storm elemental_ and it strains against the castle wardline for a mere ten minutes, steadily growing in size and intensity, until the wards buckle, collapsing in on themselves and allowing the enraged being to swirl directly into the great hall where his father is holding court.

The message is indeed from Scott, but it’s not from Scott, Heir Hoying. It’s from Scott, Archmage of Vesca, and bears an accusation of assassination. Constance apparently succumbed to an insidious curse embedded within a letter of peace, targeted towards the first mage to examine it.

If the way his father fails to hide a smirk -- even in the face of the elemental -- means anything, Scott’s not wrong to accuse them. Which means Mitch’s letter was doctored by his father, because only his father could have circumvented the Hoying wards, and so Scott must believe Mitch betrayed him.

Mitch knows this happens. They’ve been at war on and off his whole life. He’s seen other nation’s leaders fall to battle and to intrigue. Power, magical and political, is granted by birth and stripped by death and all of them are subject to the turn of their fortune, the cunning of their foes, and the whims of the Lady.

But it feels different when the man who used to sneak him extra vineberry custard under his mother’s nose, who taught him how to weave a light when he was scared of the dark, who healed even the smallest of his childhood scrapes with a gently waved hand, just used a letter he wrote to murder a fellow monarch and the mother of someone he’d hoped could be his friend.

And that’s not even the worst of it, because the note was meant for Scott, and thus Scott was most likely the intended victim. So his father just attempted to assassinate a child barely older than Mitch himself, for the crime of being born into Mitch’s station on an opposing side. Constance was welcome but ultimately collateral damage.

Not that Constance is exactly an innocent victim in this either; the seraph sent to Mitch’s bedchamber is testament to that. Mitch should have foreseen their tactics, honestly. If the blood oath works as at least Mitch intended, then neither Mitch nor Scott can directly harm the other, and thus the war cannot easily be won by the next generation. So for the good of each nation, it would be best to destroy the heir of the other before any succession takes place.

However, it seems Michael, Archmage of Ananassa, may have faltered in his strategy. He succeeded in killing his counterpart, normally a great feat for a monarch in any war. But in doing so, he not only failed to eliminate the future threat to his magedom, he brought that threat to immediate and full bore in the guise of a grieving and vengeful teenage boy. And given the short amount of time between Mitch sending his letter and the sheer power of the elemental that is his response, Scott’s magical inheritance must have been swift, brutal, and  _exceptional_.

All traces of satisfaction leave Mitch’s father’s face when the elemental releases its fury and their hall is no longer a center of political business and strategy, but is instead spun into chaos. Winds howl, rain lashes, and sparking plasma lights up the hall and threatens death to everyone within it.

Mitch can’t help but cry out when a huge hunk of what he thinks was once a chandelier smashes into his face, knocking him on his ass and slicing deep enough to drench him in blood. It hurts, and he spends several long moments lying dazed on the floor, unable to recover his breath.

The elemental staggers and the winds and lightning fade to less dangerous levels. It seems for a moment that his father has overwhelmed it; both destructive and containment weaves fly from his hands, even as Mitch can feel a hastily constructed shield drape itself around him where he’s lying on the floor.

But the monster soon shakes its head and recovers, turning to face Mitch’s father head on.The fight is long and hard, but with the help of Mitch’s mom, the magical advisors still present, and Mitch himself once he manages to get back up, his father eventually contains and banishes the elemental.

Mitch’s wounds heal quickly, as do those of the others who survived. But it takes a solid week to get the castle’s ancient wards back up to their former strength, and another two to reinforce them to the point where they could likely repel another attack like the first.

But strangely, while attacks on the border and other points of strategic importance to the Ananassan military and economy occur with increasing frequency and success, no such direct attack on Castle Grassi happens again.

 

***

 

It’s another five years before it’s clear that Mitch’s father has burned out, and six months longer before Mitch, his mother, and the court finally convince him to abdicate. When his last ditch attempt on Scott’s life, one final curse that takes him weeks of effort to weave, is easily and immediately rebuffed, he’s left with little choice. His magic wells are fractured, unable to contain the power they once could. The flow from the leys no longer meets his needs, and they’ve been unable to reclaim any along the border in over a year. They’re not losing the war, per se, as Vesca has been unable to drive further into their lands. But the stalemate they’ve reached is decidedly unbalanced.

The magic of the leys diverts to Mitch the second his father concedes, burning along his magical channels and overflowing his wells faster than they can expand to meet his new status. Magelore passed down from all Ananassan archmagi, famous and forgotten, flows into his mind along with their power, and he shudders and screams as it overwhelms him.

He had warning. He knew this would happen, though not quite how it would feel. He wonders what Scott felt as all of this fell down upon him, unannounced and unwanted, when he was barely more than a child. It’s the last thought he has for an entire day.

Mitch wakes up an archmage; a vessel of Lady Magic and the ruler of a nation.

He also inherits reluctant command of a bitter and poorly fought war.

 

**To be continued...**


	2. Chapter 2

The magedom is in straights more dire than Mitch previously believed. His father may have called their situation a stalemate, but in truth it’s more of a siege. With all three of the disputed border leys under Vescan control for over a year, their loyalty has settled on the enemy. Their ambient magic, which fed the flora, fauna, and people of Ananassa, is gone.

This shortage has consequences. Without enough magic, Ananassa’s plants are less hardy and their pollinators are declining. Herbivores are finding less food, and thus so are their predators. Many are weakening, and those that aren’t are leaving for literally greener pastures in Vesca and other neighboring magedoms. Mitch’s people, mage and mundane alike, are having to do more with less, all while living in fear of another Vescan attack.

Mitch himself, with his deep magical reserves and the leys he can directly draw upon, is hardly short of power. But while he makes frequent trips all around his domain to redistribute magic where it’s most needed, even he can’t sustain an entire magedom out of withering resources forever.

And so, after more than a month of assessment and thought, along with retiring and replacing many of the high-ranking officials who’d counseled his father so unwisely, he attempts to parley. Unlike when he was a child, he’s not stuck working around his father’s wards in secrecy and guilt, trying to avoid the notice of an enemy archmage. This time, he sends his message directly, following all the diplomatic casting protocols of old to ensure the message carries the credential charms and neutrality aura which will enable it to pass through the Hoying wards without deceit. The same protocols ensure it can’t be adulterated, misdirected, or carry any harmful spell or intent.

He really wishes he’d had the strength and knowledge necessary to cast them before now.

The first message comes back burned to a crisp. Mitch studies it. Perhaps he miswove? The protocols are long and ritualistic and he’s never used them before. If he missed a step, Scott’s wards would reject his message as they would any spell that failed to circumvent them. He tries again, more slowly this time, ensuring everything is done exactly as prescribed in the treaties.

In the end, he’s still left with a pile of ash. A fire imp appears on his desk holding his missive, crushing it into a ball and lighting it aflame, all while giving him the finger with her spare hand.

Scott took the time to conjure his way through all those same diplomacy protocols just to dramatically reject him.

Message received.

 

***

 

The thing is, Mitch doesn’t know for sure that the reciprocal blood oath they cast as children will work as intended. For all he knows, all he has to do is store up enough power, refine his spellwork sufficiently, and toss a giant fireball directly into the archmage’s solar of Castle Hoying.

It requires examination, which is what he sets his mind to in between strategic discussions with War Mage Kaplan about retaking at least one of the border leys to help sustain the undernourished crops, livestock, waterways, and forests of his land.

He needs a test, or perhaps a series of tests, to figure out the limitations of the oath, or indeed, whether it took at all.

It takes him some time to puzzle out a weakness in Scott’s wards. They’re well constructed, swirling with a wild and complex array of shields, traps, and guardian spirits both old and new. It’s difficult to get a handle on the foreign structure of Vescan magecraft, and Mitch has the sudden insight that his father, with his rigid mindset on what makes for proper and civilized magic, probably never made it even this far in comprehension. He wonders if Constance had the same closed mindedness, and realizes that not only is the answer probably yes, but that this is how Scott managed to upend the balance so quickly after his ascension; greater fluidity of mind and magic.

And it’s as he’s making that realization that the wildness of the Hoying wards resolves, not into a pattern because it doesn’t have one, but to a recognizable flow of cause and effect. And in it Mitch finds the weakness he needs.

It’s a simple weave he embeds into it. Harmful but mild. He doesn’t want his method to be obvious, doesn’t want Scott to immediately figure out the weakness and plug the hole. Plus maiming himself in the event the oath _does_ work as intended seems like something to avoid.

And so it’s a shock charm he casts, centered on the edge of the ward, lying in wait for the next time Scott passes through it. He smirks at the thought of Scott finding it some evening, a day or two from now, hopefully in front of whatever company he keeps between the sheets, or at least in front of important courtiers. The thought amuses Mitch all the way until midnight, when a sudden jolt sparks across his skin, sending him to his knees and making him drop the wine and snack he was floating in a clatter of silver and crackle of ozone.

Well. Guess that’s a no on the fireball.

 

***

 

The next test is to see if using a non-magical proxy counts as him causing harm. He consults his spies and determines the taverns Scott frequents, then hires someone to conduct a potentially painful but non-fatal experiment.

Unsurprisingly, it costs a substantial amount of money to convince someone to punch an archmage in the face. Thankfully, Mitch has no shortage of silver.

It takes weeks to set up. The man sneaks across the border to Vesca, makes himself known and well-liked through the consumption of countless tankards of ale at several possible establishments, and waits for one of Scott’s visits to coincide with his own..

Impressively, he manages everything without getting himself killed; setting up a scenario where he’s -- to all appearances -- merely caught  up in a spontaneous brawl, rounding on Scott and lashing out without any evidence of premeditation that would land him with charges of treason or espionage. Reports back through Mitch’s spy network tell him that Scott is apparently quite civilized when it comes to law and order; Mitch’s hired goon spends two nights in gaol along with the rest of the brawlers and is released with nothing more than orders to assist in repairing the tavern along with two weeks of other labor owed to the town.

Mitch’s primary question of interest is answered far more swiftly, however. The night of the brawl he’s woken abruptly from a peaceful sleep by the sensation of a fist smashing across his cheekbone, his tailbone hitting what feels like a floor, what seems to be a series of kicks to his ribs, and the dislocation of two of the knuckles of his right hand, all in rapid succession.

Mitch might, possibly, have insufficiently thought this through.

Once it’s over, once he’s sure things have calmed, he drags himself out of bed and hobbles over to the mirror, lighting the nearby candles with a wave of his hand to take stock of the damage. The bruising and split lip are as impressive as they felt; score one for his goon’s ability to throw a right hook.

Mitch tilts his chin higher to get a better look and debates calling his healer to help him deal with the situation. However, Kevin’s unlikely to have much sympathy given he advised against this experiment, so Mitch decides to spare himself the lecture and begins the hours’ worth of incantations it’s going to take for him to feel well enough to fall back asleep all by himself.

 

***

 

Mitch uses his newfound insight into Vescan magic to open another weakness, this time in the defenses surrounding the closest border ley rather than the main wards of the capital. He weaves a corridor, a gateway through the primary shield, which allows his soldiers to attack while using the shield’s own defenses to make it impervious to all but the strongest of conjured spirits. It takes an enormous amount of power to hold the breach, especially once the enemy officers start calling up larger beings, but it’s enough. The ley falls, sparking and shimmering beautifully along its entire length as its alliance to Vesca collapses. Mitch hums as some of its power flows through his channels for the first time since he ascended. It’s not his, at least not yet; on average a ley needs to be held for a year before its magic aligns to one archmage alone. But he now has access to part of it, and through him so do his people and the surrounding Ananassan-held lands. That alone is worth all the effort expended.

He knows the victory won’t be easily repeated; Scott will figure out what he’s done and find a way to counteract it before Mitch can muster another attack. But the ley has fallen, the stalemate is broken, and things are looking up for the first time in Mitch’s reign.

 

***

 

Mitch has never hated snakes. He’s actually found them quite beautiful in the past, perfect in form and mesmerizing in movement. That doesn’t mean he wants an up close and personal encounter with one in the confines of his own castle.

The initial bite doesn’t hurt very much, set in the juncture between his left thumb and forefinger. No worse than a nip from a cat or a bloodletting puncture. Mitch has the presence of mind to weave a floating shield around the snake so Kevin can identify it, just in case, but he doesn’t recognize the seriousness of the situation at first.

He starts to work out that it might be more than an inconvenience when he gets dizzy on the way to Kevin’s chambers, stumbling on the staircase and almost dropping the damn snake. But he’s confident it’ll be a quick fix right up until Kevin’s welcoming smile transforms into horrified fascination upon catching sight of Mitch’s new friend.

“By the Lady, magus, where did the menagerist find a thaumatobane viper?” He leans in to get a better look through the floating shield.

“A what?” Mitch asks. He blinks to clear his vision. Blinks again when it fails to work.

“How do you not know--?” Kevin looks him up and down. Frowns. “Mitch, where did you get the snake?”

Why is Kevin so fuzzy? Wait. Is Kevin fuzzy? Maybe the world is fuzzy. Fuzzy’s a weird word. _Fuz-_ zee. Fuz- _zee_.

“Mitch?”

Right. Focus. “Library. Not sure exactly where. Somewhere between Conjuration and Daemonology? Didn’t hurt much.”

“ _Shit._ ”

Oooh, Kevin’s swearing. Mitch doesn’t accomplish that very often. He feels strangely proud of himself.

Also just strange.

Kevin seems to disappear for a moment -- if he’s solved the self-teleportation paradox he’s been holding the hell out on Mitch -- but soon comes back wearing thick alchemical gloves and carrying a large, galena-lined box. “Float the shield in here, Mitch.”

Mitch frowns. “Why?”

Kevin’s lips are pressed tight as he holds the box closer to the snake. “Because your magic’s about to fail, and I’d like the freaking snake contained first so I can spend the next few days trying to save your life instead of dying alongside you.”

Oh. Well, when he puts it like that…

 

***

 

‘Fail’ turns out to be a euphemism for ‘spiral spectacularly out of control’.

Mitch has the benefit of drifting in and out of consciousness in between the headache, convulsions, vomiting, and alternating bouts of agony and numbness radiating up his arm. Granted, it doesn’t seem like a benefit at the time, but afterwards, when he takes in the destruction wrought by his magic lashing around without constraint, he realizes that his people quite possibly had a worse time of it than he did.

He’s still too weak to assist in the repairs, but once Kevin lets him up and out of bed, he’s going to have a lot of work to do and a lot of goodwill to rebuild.

He doesn’t put together what happened -- he blames the lingering shock and low blood pressure for his lack of insight -- until he thanks Kevin for saving his life.

“Oh, I didn’t,” Kevin responds, shining his evil light charm directly into Mitch’s eyes. “I figured out how to make the antidote, but there was nowhere near enough time to brew it.”

Mitch looks down at his weakened but very much alive body. “So I’m not dead because..?”

Kevin snorts. “Because late last night, as I was busy trying to create alchemical miracles while dodging my own walls crashing in on me and my cauldron fire intermittently flaring into sentience,--” Mitch winces apologetically “--I was visited by an unfriendly little garden sprite. It carried a half-filled potion bottle and a note from Kirstin Maldonado, Master Healer of Vesca, that read, and I quote, ‘For fuck’s sake, give him this before their idiocy kills us all.’”

Master Healer of… “You gave me an unknown substance from a high-ranking enemy official?”

Kevin stops what he’s doing to stare at him. “I gave you a medication which matched every description I’d found of the antivenom in form, smell, color, and consistency, brewed by one of the finest healers in the world, who was also, at that moment, desperate for her own castle to stop falling down around her ears because her archmage was dying, too.”

Oh. _Oh._ “The snake was planted.” Fuck, he’d even found it while researching conjuration, which of course Scott would know he’d be doing.

“No, really?” Kevin drawls. “A rare and exotic viper that just so happens to have the most potent antimagi venom known to humankind didn’t casually slither into your library of its own accord?”

“Sarcasm noted.”

“One of the menagerist’s assistants apparently disappeared shortly after you were bitten. She probably smuggled the snake in and then fled the scene of her crime.” Kevin pauses and sighs. “My guess is Kirstin was given time to brew the antidote in advance, but the plan didn’t work as expected.” He gives Mitch a long look. “I do wish the Lady granted high intelligence along with great magical power.”

Rude. Although Mitch can’t say he wouldn’t have tried something similar, poisoning Scott while having the antidote on hand for himself. He just hadn’t thought of it yet.

As Kevin works himself up into a long, possibly justified rant, Mitch amuses himself with the thought that at this moment, on the other side of the border, Scott might be in a similar bed, gritting his teeth through a near-identical lecture from his apparently equally feisty Master Healer, hoping his cracked and creaking castle stays standing long enough for him to feel up to fixing it.

All while trying to work out another way around the limitations of this motherfucking oath.

 

**To be continued**


	3. Chapter 3

The box-lining Kevin used to quarantine the viper gives Mitch an idea. He just needs a larger amount of it and an appropriate lure. 

Galena might be a pretty rock in its natural state, but it’s never going to be known as any mage’s best friend, let alone an archmage. Which makes it more difficult to look innocent of nefarious plans while acquiring a large amount of it. 

Most galena found is processed into lead and silver, both of which are useful and unremarkable once separated, save for the extra healer access required for workers and more regular magical reinfusion of the land needed around the smelters given the toxic nature of the lead. However, the raw ore itself is so resistant to magic that even lighting the otherwise mundane smelter with a weaved flame ensures that no smelting occurs; the ore remains intact regardless of temperature. The same is true for mining it; magical assistance does nothing except cause accidents.

Mining and smelting are therefore prosperous trades for mundanes, people devoid of magic who are often otherwise at a disadvantage in their magical society, even if Mitch and his father before him have tried to change that. Ananassa has several villages and towns built around the metal trade, and Mitch can thus acquire a sizable quantity of raw ore without resorting to importation or smuggling. However, securing confidentiality along with the purchase, transport, and final product creation takes time and money.

While he’s got his quartermaster working that problem, the lure part of the plan finds Mitch in a high-class brothel, seeking out a specific courtesan recommended as both skilled and loyal by several of his advisors. He explains who he’s looking for to the matron and is shown into a private suite, settling himself in a chair by the bed. He only has to wait a few minutes before a scantily clad woman enters the room.

She pauses in the doorframe, posing seductively, before her eyes widen in surprise. “Magus?”

Mitch smiles at her. She’s as pretty as described. “Hello. Are you Flora?”

“Yes. Um, hi?” She clutches her previously loose shawl around herself, not that the translucent material covers much. “What are you doing here?”

Okay, so he’s not really here for the reasons most of her prospective clients would be, but her reaction isn’t exactly flattering. He makes a show of looking around. “What are most people doing when they come here?”

She winces. “I’m sorry. I’m just, um, surprised? I mean, obviously I’m honored if you want to have me.” She eyes him up and down, gaze lingering in all the right places. “Very honored. But I would have assumed you’d prefer to visit Janac’s across the street?”

Huh. Janac also runs a brothel, except his employees are mostly masculine, unlike those found here. Not that Mitch has ever visited-- oh, who is he kidding? “I wasn’t aware my preferences were that widely discussed.”

“Seriously?” Flora asks, and then cringes even harder. “Uh, what I mean is if your preferences are more diverse than I’ve heard, or if you’re looking to experiment, I’m more than happy to be at your service.” 

Mitch is tempted to drag this out just to see how much more awkward it can get, but he takes pity, mostly on himself, and smiles again. “Please relax. You’re gorgeous and I have it on good authority that you’re very talented. If I ever decide to experiment with a woman,” -- uh huh, that’ll happen -- “you’ll be my first choice. But I’m actually looking to hire you to entertain someone else.”

“That was cruel, magus.” She huffs in displeasure, but then sashays around the bed and sits down. “Who would you like me to please? Are there any special requests? I’m versatile and adventurous, but there are some things that would cost more.”

Mitch can imagine. And frankly he has no idea if anything ‘adventurous’ would be of interest; he’s not exactly in the know on the subject of Scott’s sexual preferences. “I’m not sure, but if there are and you decide to grant them, I will most certainly compensate you for your trouble afterwards.” 

She purses her lips. “Whose bed am I to warm?”

And now for the tricky part. “Archmage Hoying.”

Flora stares at him.

“I know it’s a big ask. I will, of course, pay extra.”

She laughs. “And here I was considering giving you a discount.”

Ah. Mitch has heard that Scott grew into his looks as thoroughly as he grew into his magic. Guess that’s accurate, then. “The sex isn’t all I’d be paying for. The point would be to lure him into a trap. I imagine it might take several encounters before that’s possible. You’ll also be compensated for the risk you’d take, although we’ll do everything in our power to minimize any danger to you.”

She nods slowly. “I’m loyal to you and to Ananassa, magus. With compensation, I’m more than willing to take the risk to help the war effort. The fact that I’d also be volunteering to crawl under a man who looks like that and is rumored to be very generous in bed is a nice bonus.”

Mitch sighs with relief, even as he has to force his mind away from considering Scott’s  _ generosity _ .

“However,” she continues, smirking for the first time since they started talking. It’s a good look on her. “Those rumors? All come from sources that suggest you’d still be better served talking to Janac.”

What?  _ Oh _ . 

Well, that might be an embarrassing new record for not being _ in the know _ .

 

***

 

The plan proceeds on schedule with a beautiful man named Calen as the bait instead of Flora. While Calen is busy getting himself into place and catching Scott’s attention, Mitch’s people have acquired enough polished galena to line the small bedchamber he’ll be leading Scott into. However, it needs to be tested to see if it can contain an archmage, which means it needs to be tested on Mitch.

He can’t feel anything odd about the mock-up they’ve prepared until he’s fully inside it, and even then the world just feels sluggish until Kevin closes and locks the door behind him.

Then it’s abruptly awful. The flow from the leys cuts off instantly, leaving him disoriented and adrift. His wells are still full, he can access his power, but there’s nothing replenishing them, not even the trickle of ambient magic that’s available to even the least gifted mage among his people.

He has an hour to get out of the room and he sets about trying, first with small, exploratory weaves, checking for seams or gaps, and then with more targeted strikes, blasting at the doors and walls to create a breach. His channels flow with the magic he pushes through them, but each time he stops there’s this disconcerting emptiness as those same channels fall dormant rather than pull replacement power from the leys, as he’s now used to, or the air, as it was while he was still merely Heir.

Nothing works. The magic is just absorbed into the galena panels, splashing up against it and then fading, achieving nothing but draining Mitch’s wells.

He’s not sure how much time has passed once he starts physically trying to break through the door, but  it holds firm. Burning or even digging through the wood of the walls also does nothing, because he’s then confronted by the galena itself. It’s too solid for him to break by hand, or with the help of the wooden table leg he’s liberated, and completely unaffected by anything arcane.

He panics a bit then, and while he’s not proud of the destructive force he brings to bear or the power he wastes doing it, he supposes it’s a decent test on its own. Scott’s surely even more likely to panic, given that this will be a surprise for him, and it’s good to know if the room can still hold firm.

It can.

Mitch is lying on the bed, his wells almost spent, a strange emptiness settling over his mind, when Kevin finally opens the door. It feels like it’s been far longer than an hour.

A moment or two passes and then it’s like being struck by lightning as the leys force a reconnection. It’s almost as bad as his ascension, although thankfully it doesn’t last nearly as long. His back arches as his channels light up, power flowing through them once more. It’s so painful and yet such a relief that he has no idea which aspect is what’s making him cry.

Some of the magic escapes him, flickering out from his fingertips, flaring into an aura all around him. He can sense it, feel it sizzling next to his skin, smell the trace of it in the air, but he can’t control it. Nor does he really want to because it’s proof that his power, his very self, is restored.

He almost feels bad for planning to inflict this on Scott. Just not quite enough to call it off. 

 

***

 

Calen is successful in attracting Scott’s attention. His back-up team send a confirmation, but Mitch has already worked it out himself when a dinner with Kevin is interrupted by burning stings running down his back. Sadly, he doesn’t figure out what’s happening fast enough to avoid hissing in surprise, which leads to Kevin insisting he remove his shirt to check the problem.

“How did you manage to have sex in between your physical this afternoon and now?” Kevin asks as Mitch twists, trying to see his back in the mirror. “You had literally half an hour of spare time.”

“I didn’t! I don’t know what’s going— oh.” Eight scratches mark his skin, four trailing down each shoulder blade. He hisses again as a red bruise blossoms high on his neck, complete with teeth marks. 

Well. Calen is  _ feisty _ and apparently enjoying himself. Maybe Mitch should have asked for that discount after all. 

 

***

 

A week later, the room has been set up in the home they’ve rented for Calen in the Vescan capital. And not a moment too soon; Mitch is getting sick of random love bites and bruises turning up all over his skin when he himself hasn’t been getting any. He makes a mental note to fix that once this scheme is accomplished. He’ll want to celebrate saving his land and people, and finding a handsome partner for a good fuck seems like a just reward. 

Mitch has high hopes this will work. He technically won’t be harming Scott, just cutting him off from his magic while Mitch will still have full access. Without an archmage protecting Vesca, they’ll be able to sweep through the border and into the capital with relative ease. And once the ancestral Vescan leys fall, Scott will no longer be anywhere close to powerful enough to match Mitch, even if he manages to escape the box.

On the off chance Mitch also loses access to the leys...well, Scott can only last so long without water in a locked room. His team will just need to keep Scott’s people from locating him while nature takes its course. Mitch hopes it doesn’t come down to that, but it’s a choice he’s willing to make for the sake of Ananassa’s future.

The first part of the plan works perfectly. Mitch isn’t sure how Calen gets Scott into the room alone, but he does. 

However, Mitch knows the second the door closes, because contrary to his prediction, his connection to the leys slams shut as thoroughly as Scott’s must have. 

This is  _ not _ how he was hoping this would go.

 

***

 

Having his magic cut off again is just as awful as it was the first time, except it doesn’t come back after an hour, and the lack of it feels infinitely worse with every passing minute.

Mitch doesn’t panic this time, doesn’t burn through his wells in a burst of desperate destruction. He saves it. He’s not sure how long this will take — he’s still trying not to think about exactly what ‘this’ means — and he wants to make sure he has some power left if he really needs it.

Six hours in and it no longer just feels empty; it’s starting to actively hurt. It twinges at first, tingling here and there in random areas of Mitch’s body. Then it starts to ache in his chest, slowly spreading outward across his torso and down each limb to the tips of his fingers and toes. 

“Your channels are collapsing,” Kevin says after examining him, diagnostic spells hovering in the air between them. “Sort of like neuropathy, except it’s not your nerves being affected.”

“What can I do?” Mitch asks.

“Apart from the obvious?” Kevin sighs and dismisses his weave. “You need to keep magic flowing through them as best you can, otherwise you may permanently damage your ability to draw from the leys or control your output.”

_ That _ is not good.

And so Mitch spends the rest of the day weaving spells more commonly used in the average preschool than the solar of an archmage’s castle. He tries to stretch out the time between each one to ration his power, but the aches comes back faster and faster as the day goes on. 

Before he goes to sleep, far later than normal, he casts the first spell he ever learned, a tiny, heatless flame that his father showed him when he was barely three years old. 

He hasn’t seen his parents since his ascension. Archmages don’t often abdicate, but those who do generally leave in exile; his father is no different and his mother went with him. His relationship with them was beyond strained by the end, but even though Mitch doesn’t miss Michael, Archmage of Ananassa, he does miss his father Mike.

And so the little blue flame, dancing first over his palm and then on his nightstand, is comforting. Almost like his dad is there for him again like he was when Mitch was small.

 

***

 

Everything hurts when he wakes up the next morning; the aches have blossomed into cramps running all through his body. He reweaves his flame, hissing as the magic stutters in his chest before reluctantly flowing, shoving its way through his channels through sheer force rather than natural design.

He doesn’t know if he can manage several more days like this, and that’s assuming it doesn’t get worse before it gets better. Not to mention dealing with the guilt of what has to happen before ‘better’ will be an option.

He shakes his head, attempting to clear it of unwanted thoughts, and realizes he didn’t have dinner the night before and so he’s both hungry and thirsty. Summoning water is a small enough task that helps reopen his channels for a few moments, and he drinks a full cup while getting himself dressed.

He’s still thirsty when he gets to the kitchens, so he orders some extra juice along with his usual kofi, toast, and eggs.

It’s only when he’s done, when his whole tray is cleared, that he realizes he’s just as hungry and thirsty as he was before he started. 

He sighs in resignation. The oath has clearly decided that if Scott can’t eat or drink due to Mitch’s actions, Mitch will gain no benefit from doing so either. This entire elaborate plan is a complete waste of time.

 

***

 

Wary of Scott’s reaction to suddenly being freed, Mitch orders his team to simply drop the concealment and confusion spells that have been hiding Scott’s prison and hightail it for the border. It only takes Kirstin, Scott’s master healer, an hour after they do so to figure out where her archmage is. 

Kirstin, even in the absence of Scott’s natural shielding, is powerful enough that Kevin doesn’t make more than a cursory attempt to scry through her eyes, wary of her catching on. However, she has another member of Scott’s court along with her, a younger mage who isn’t yet experienced enough to block Kevin’s infiltration.

They watch their frantic dash through town in Kevin's scrypool, the young mage -- Matt, apparently -- following Kirstin. Mitch sees the hasty shield Kirstin conjures, swimming with elemental sprites and an impressively-sized daemon, around the small house they find, presumably in anticipation of containing something unknown within. The last thing Mitch remembers is Matt’s view of physically breaking down the galena-lined door of the bedchamber inside with the help of several armed guards.

He’s a little distracted after that, what with his channels searing open as magic burns its way back into him. He doesn’t see Scott’s rescue as it occurs in real time. In fact, it’s more than an hour before Mitch finds the will to pick himself up off the floor, exhausted but with his power restored. 

Once Mitch is upright again, Kevin bullies him into having a full meal and several healing elixirs before he lets him return to the now-looping scrypool to see what he missed.

He rewatches the search and the subsequent destruction of the door. Kirstin and Matt find a man lying on the ground against the far wall of the room, unmoving, still in shadow despite the light now filtering in behind them. The man’s eyes open, but he doesn’t otherwise react, just stares at them silently as if he can’t quite comprehend their presence. 

Mitch has heard that Scott is tall and handsome. Downright gorgeous, some of his sources have said upon further query. But if that’s true, it’s not obvious right now. Instead, he’s pale and drawn, his eyes, brow, and jaw looking too big for his hollow face, his size hidden in the defensive curl of his limbs. 

The inside of the room is destroyed, the walls torn. Jagged parallel claw marks scar almost every inch of them, and the rest is scorched black. One of the ceiling beams has partially collapsed, plaster scattered on the floor and what remains of the bed. Here and there, the holes reveal the layer of pristine galena plating underneath, unmarred by the damage wrought on the rest of the room.

With Scott so still and his courtiers seemingly unsure how to proceed, there’s no movement in the midst of the destruction, save for the incongruent fluttering of a small, blue butterfly. The insect bobs up and down, weaving erratically through the stale air of the room before fluttering past the two mages and out the door into the light. 

“Oh, Scotty,” Kirstin whispers, losing her uncertainty and dropping to her knees beside him. Matt turns to watch the butterfly, and as he does, the view in the scrypool of course follows his gaze.

And Mitch winces, because his sparksight allows him to see what Matt can’t. The power of all the leys of Vesca is barrelling towards the house, seeking out the archmage it had been denied like air rushes to fill a vacuum. 

The magic surges and sweeps into the small dark room and Kirstin gasps, obviously feeling something as it passes her. Matt turns to follow the sound, but the rest of her reaction is lost in the face of Scott’s. He hadn’t responded much to the door opening, at least not that MItch could tell, but now his body jolts, back arching, limbs shaking as the power forces itself through his damaged channels. Mitch grits his teeth sympathetically as Scott screams; he knows exactly how that feels.

Mitch makes himself keep watching. He doesn’t really want to see the rest, but he could learn something useful, or at least more about his foe. And part of it is his guilt talking; if he can’t watch the consequences of his choices, his strategies in war, then he has no business being the one deciding them.

Kirstin arranges for a swift-carriage while Scott’s down, never releasing her hold on him despite how the sparking and surging magic around him must be hurting her. She chatters at him throughout, attempting to console and distract him in turns until the siege passes. 

Mitch wants to hear Scott speak, is suddenly desperate to hear what he sounds like, to find out whether he’s anything like he was back when they brought this on themselves with their naive optimism, or if nothing of that child remains. But Scott only whispers a few responses to Kirstie’s queries, none of which Matt hears, and thus Mitch doesn’t hear them either.

Eventually, Kirstin and Matt get Scott up and into the supporting arms of two of their guards, who assist him into the carriage. The scrypool, of course, stays with Matt, and Mitch watches Kirstin circling, examining the cage one last time before leaving. The damage to the room is impressive, even if nothing Scott created helped.

“Earth elemental?” Matt finally asks.

Kirstin nods wearily, still examining the walls. “Yeah, and then fire, I think. Before he knew what he was dealing with, or perhaps even after, if he was panicking. I think he conjured a water sprite at some point too; he must have been thirsty.”

Mitch frowns; he has literally no idea how that would work and frankly doesn’t want to. 

There’s a pause, and Mitch is impressed when the image in the pool fades slightly grey, indicating that Kevin had cast through it at that point. Mitch holds his breath, but the nudge was clearly successful as a moment later, Matt asks, “Why the butterfly, though? Wouldn’t keeping the sprite around have been more useful for trying to escape?”

Good question, Kevin. 

Kirstin cocks her head. “The sprite would take more power to sustain; he was probably rationing, at least once he calmed down. And — “ She turns suddenly, looking straight into Matt’s eyes and consequently straight into Mitch’s. “A butterfly was the first conjuration his mother taught him, when he was a toddler and didn’t like being alone.”

Oh. 

“Did you get what you wanted?” Kirstin continues, her tone growing harsher. “Did you enjoy seeing him like that? Alone and in pain because he miscalculated and actually trusted someone new for once?”

_ Oh _ . 

Poor Matt’s befuddlement is sincere. “What? Why would I--?”

An orb of light flares in Kirstin’s hand, pulled from wells which are clearly deeper than average for a common mage, given the strength of the shield she already cast. She whispers to the light, blows it towards Matt’s face, and the image dissolves in a shower of sparks.

Mitch staggers away from the scrypool, not really caring where he’s going. 

Mitch’s dad taught him to weave a light, a feeble, harmless flame that did nothing but glow, all because Mitch was afraid of the dark. Mike, as ruthless as he turned out to be, loved Mitch enough to make his very first magic lesson something that would help him feel safe. 

For some reason, it never crossed Mitch’s mind that Constance might have done the same, felt the same, for her heir. For her  _ son _ . The son Mitch had just locked away in a dark, magicless box to die.

Apparently ruthlessness runs in the Grassi line as surely as magical power.

Mitch drops to his knees on the cold stone floor of the hallway; the dinner Kevin forced on him tastes far worse coming up than it did going down.

Mitch can’t...he can’t do this anymore.

 

**To be continued.**


	4. Chapter 4

But Mitch can’t just give up. They’re still at war. He still needs to liberate at least one more border ley before the cold weather hits in earnest. Ananassa can’t heal if it goes through another winter without enough magic.

And so Mitch pushes forward with another offensive, sheltering his troops under powerful shields as they storm the next ley line. They’re making substantial progress, forcing the Vescans to retreat under a barrage of weaves and arrows, until suddenly their progress comes to a halt. 

Which might have something to do with the castle-sized earth elemental that rumbles up from the ground under their feet. Scott’s not exactly subtle in announcing his arrival to the frey. 

On the upside, he’s clearly feeling better, so maybe Mitch’s guilt can start to fuck off.

Mitch’s troops scatter when the elemental attacks, as do those of Vesca when Mitch starts to hurl fireballs at the thing.

The elemental staggers, but then laughs and turns its back on Mitch. It’s confusing for a moment, because really? Mitch isn’t naive enough to think he can easily outmatch Scott, but he’d been under the impression they were almost equal in strength and thus his attack shouldn’t be something to laugh at, no matter how powerful the conjuration.

However, the odd action suddenly becomes clear when the elemental stoops down and picks something up. Or rather some _ one _ .

Mitch has to admit that standing on the shoulder of a massive elemental that you conjured yourself as it stares your enemy down is probably the most badass thing he’s ever seen. 

Sucks to be on the wrong side of it.

It also sucks that he can no longer attack it without risk of immolating himself. Not to mention the distraction of discovering Scott, no longer suffering the effects of a magic-blocking imprisonment, is every damn bit as attractive as rumored. 

Mitch really needs his armorer to get him an all-black leather ensemble, too. For the intimidation value and not because it looks hot as fuck. Well. Not  _ just _ .

Mitch shakes his head to clear it and then strides out into the middle of the battlefield. His war mage is going to kill him -- he can already hear the lecture -- but if Scott’s going to shield his damn conjuration with his own body, Mitch has to do the same for his soldiers and the anchorpoint of his shield.

Now this?  _ This  _ is a stalemate.

They stand there, both unable to attack but also unable to retreat and give the other the advantage, for far longer than is comfortable for either morale or warmth. 

The field is mostly silent, the murmurs of nervous soldiers can be heard here and there, along with the rumble of an impatient elemental and the crackling hum of Mitch’s shield.

They’re not staring at each other, precisely, although they’re both very obviously aware of the other. Scott looks strong. Composed. If the strain of maintaining such a large conjuration is getting to him, he’s doing a damn good job of hiding it. Then again, Mitch is making very sure that the growing discomfort of holding the weave of his shield doesn’t show on his face either. 

Sometimes being an archmage is more about maintaining the illusion of limitless power than actual magic.

Mitch is slowly coming to the realization that he’s going to have to do something. Scott doesn’t have to press forward; he already holds the ley that Mitch needs. He can stand there forever and lose nothing but his patience. Mitch is the one who needs more magical resources before winter. 

Okay, so. Fighting is out, so talking needs to happen. An impromptu diplomatic petition. Totally Mitch’s forte. What could possibly go wrong?

Everything, it turns out, although for once it’s not because Mitch didn’t have enough time to plan out an eloquent opening line. In fact, he doesn’t get a chance to say anything at all. 

A loud war cry comes from behind Scott’s elemental, perhaps twenty voices strong. Scott’s head whips around to find the source, but Mitch doesn’t see his next move because in that moment he’s suddenly busy trying to fend off the fall of a flight of arrows, several dozen at the least. 

He repels them, mostly, weaving more protections against physical attacks into his shield on the fly. His soldiers duck for cover, smaller shields of both magic and metal flashing. It’s good they’re so well trained because that reflex protects most of them from the arrows Mitch misses, which thwack into the ground at terrifying speed and hit at least one woman, judging by the screams. 

But then Mitch’s own reflexes are put to the test as another volley descends, this time targeting the centre of the shield: him. More of them bounce off this time, clattering to the ground outside the protected area. But three get through, and Mitch is as unfortunate as his wounded soldier, likewise screaming as an arrow drives itself through his collarbone, sinking deep into his chest and knocking him to the ground. 

His main shield falls, fizzling out with the ozone-tinged snap of an improperly closed weave. There’s pain. And blood. Too much, probably? Mitch waves his other arm, desperately tries to cast a coagulation charm, and then promptly fades out. 

 

***

 

Mitch wakes up tucked into his own bed in the keep of Castle Grassi, far away from the border. Which is odd, given the circumstances, but he’s not dead so he’ll take it. 

Scott must have allowed Kevin access to the field almost immediately for Mitch to still be breathing, probably out of fear that causing any delay could trigger the oath. At least that’s what Mitch would fear if their positions had been reversed.

He looks down to find his shoulder healed, a thick round scar all that remains of the arrow wound. He gingerly tests it, straightening his arm and then lifting it, sweeping it to the side and back. It’s stiff and sore, but functional. 

Something feels different overall, though he can’t really tell what. He’s not quite awake enough to care.

He can see the glow of early morning light around the edges of his curtains, so he was unconscious a whole night at least. He considers calling for Kevin to find out what’s going on, but he’s still exhausted and ignoring the world for another hour or five in favor of more napping sounds perfect. Besides, Kevin must have been up all night healing him, at least some of it cramped in the back of a swift-carriage for them to be home already, and thus he also deserves the rest.

Mitch isn’t sure how long he dozes before his door opens and a bright-eyed, entirely too cheery Kevin steps through it, whistling and carrying a breakfast tray in his hands like a kitchen servant.

Mitch groans and rolls over, burying his face in his pillow. The movement pulls on his wound and makes his shoulder ache, which does not at all improve his mood. “Shouldn’t you be tired or something?”

“I was,” Kevin agrees, muttering a cantrip to open the curtains. 

“Oh, fuck off,” Mitch whines as the sun streams directly into the room, bright enough that even the pillow on his face doesn’t fully help.

Kevin ignores his manful complaining. “But then I slept for sixteen hours, went for a run, conferred with the battle healers about the other wounded, ate enough for three people, went for another run, and slept an additional eight hours. So now I’m fully refreshed and ready to deal with a cranky archmage who doesn’t know what day it is.”

MItch groans again, more softly this time, and reluctantly surfaces. He cracks an eye open. “Is that vineberry jam?”

“Only if you sit up.”

Ugh. Mitch does and is soon slightly-less-grumpily crunching toast and washing it down with chilled juice, while Kevin pulls a chair over from the main seating area. 

After another half-slice of toast, Mitch asks, “So how am I not dead?”

“You were smart and capable enough to only be hit by one arrow and to slow your blood flow before passing out. Also, I am a world-class healer.”

Mitch nods. “I knew I hired you for a reason. What happened?”

“Arrows fell from the sky and skewered you. Your shield collapsed. We thought we were all dead, except about five seconds later, Archmage Hoying also went down like a sack of bricks and the elemental disappeared.”

“He...he _what_?” Being alive because Scott had allowed his retrieval from the battlefield to avoid possibly triggering the oath makes sense. Being alive because Scott had _already_ triggered the oath by ordering Mitch shot...does not. Mitch has thought a lot of uncomplimentary things towards Scott over the past year or so, but _utterly_ _brain dead_ wasn’t previously one of them.

Kevin starts to answer when there’s a sudden tapping at the nearby window. Mitch turns towards it and is confronted by the ugliest air sprite he’s ever seen peering at them through the glass, translucent dress fluttering in the wind, pointy little teeth grinning maniacally. 

He glances at Kevin, who just looks bemused, and then casts a few intent spells, watching with his sparksight as they weave around and through her despite the fact that his wards should have stopped her unless the diplomacy protocols were satisfied. He no longer has much faith that his wards will keep anything Scott conjures the hell out. 

She passes, of course, and Mitch opens the window with one more weave, reluctantly letting her in. The little fucker swoops inside, drops the scroll she’s carrying directly into his breakfast, and then puffs away as quickly as she came.

Mitch pauses; this is the first direct communication Scott’s sent since they were twelve. It’s bizarre how that simultaneously makes him both anxious and a little thrilled.

Ugh, what is  _ wrong _ with him? For the first time in, well, ever, he’d almost like his childhood tutor back, if only so the old fossil could force him to write “I must not find the enemy attractive” a thousand times without magic. 

After another moment of hesitation -- “Are you going to open that, or what?” -- Mitch sighs, tries in vain to spell the jam off despite Scott’s obvious adherence to the anti-tampering protocols, and then breaks the wax seal:

> _ Mitch Grassi, Archmage of Ananassa, Bane of My Existence _
> 
> _ I promise I’m not stupid enough to order my archers to attack you. They did that on their own. Which brings me to the point of this epic communique: Lady Magic has interpreted the damn oath more liberally than I  ever imagined, since even actions taken by agents of mine without my permission now appear to reflect harm. _
> 
> _ Feel free to let your minions know not to assassinate me under their own initiative and end both our bloodlines. I’ll be really pissed if I have to watch Idaeus take over our leys from the afterlife. She’s a walking advertisement for contraceptive conjurations and in no way deserves the power of three magedoms.  _
> 
> _ Scott Hoying, Archmage of Vesca, Bane of Your Existence _
> 
> _ P.S. Congratulate your damn war mage for me.  _

Bane of his existence. Accurate. Maybe Mitch will change his official style to that.

He’s right about Mabel, Archmage of Idaeus, too. While Ananassa hasn’t warred with Idaeus in four generations, given that Mabel’s callousness is matched only by her stupidity, Mitch would still rather Scott rip every Ananassan ley out of Grassi hands forever than give his people and land over to her responsibility for even a month. 

He’s also strangely relieved that Scott didn’t order the attack. Which is stupid, because proof positive that his enemy is an idiot would actually be a good thing, while proof that the oath won’t even let them accidentally initiate harm against the other is a fucking nightmare given their ongoing state of war.

“What am I congratulating Esther for?” Mitch asks finally, unsure he wants to know.

Kevin cocks an eyebrow at him. “You can’t feel it?”

Mitch frowns and almost responds with ‘feel what?’, except suddenly he  _ can  _ feel it. There’s more power in his channels. More power in the surrounding land and air. “She took the ley while we were both down?”

Kevin reaches over and snags the last of Mitch’s toast, dipping it in his egg before popping the stolen morsel into his mouth. “She took the ley while you were both down.”

 

**To be continued**


	5. Chapter 5

Things get better after that. With two of the three border leys once again occupied by Ananassa, the land has just enough magic to sustain itself, albeit with regular redistribution from Mitch.

The war, however, has ground to a halt. Mitch still has a spy in the kitchens of Castle Hoying, one living in the town outside, and a third at Scott’s summer villa on the far side of Vesca, but with none left active near that side of the border, he has no surefire way to tell when Scott’s at the front or might soon appear. So he can’t often afford to press an offensive that might inadvertently injure or kill him as well. Presumably Scott has the same problem, given the lack of Vescan attacks.

It’s good in that no one’s dying over a few feet of magically charged land, but also frustrating as fuck. Moreso for Scott, Mitch imagines, because if Mitch manages to keep his two new leys long enough to gain their loyalty, it’ll be Vesca that’s hurting for power next year.

Mitch isn’t used to having the advantage. He’s growing fond of it.

Life goes on. He spends an unpredictable part of each month near the border to be in easy reach in case of Vescan attack, part in more distant areas of his realm channeling magic into the fields and forests where needed to speed up their recovery, and the rest at home dealing with more mundane politics and the day-to-day of running a magedom.

One morning, already running late, he’s confused when one of his bed curtains collapses in a heap without apparent reason, save for a strange unravelling near the top. He frowns at it, but doesn’t have time to investigate as he’s not even dressed, despite needing to be in the courtyard in six minutes to officially grant Esther approval to marry.

Having a say in his top-ranking courtier’s marital affairs is an old tradition, and a stupid one, in his opinion. But his people expect it and so does Esther, so after he watches her present Darian with the traditional infinity belt she’s spent the last month and a half weaving, approve of it he will.

He’s wishing he’d taken the time to at least check for magic thirteen minutes later, when he’s standing naked in the snow, wearing only his boots, because his trousers, shift, tunic, braies, and favorite cloak have all spontaneously unravelled just as his curtain did.

In front of half the townsfolk and all of his courtiers and personal guard.

Mitch summons another cloak, wrapping it around his torso, even as he searches for what’s obviously a spell. He finds it, a moment later, in the form of a small life imp who’s sitting in the crook of a nearby tree laughing its tiny ass off.

Ignoring how all his courtiers are studiously looking anywhere but at him -- with Esther and Kevin both trying to look stern instead of like it’s killing them not to laugh and poor Darien wide-eyed and likely questioning whether he wants to marry into this chaos after all -- he sends a bolt of electricity after it, watching it disappear in a puff of smoke.

But not before it makes his replacement cloak unravel too.

Scott’s apparently decided to get creative in dealing with his otherwise thwarted plans for world domination.

Two can play at that game.

 

***

 

It takes Mitch a few hours to figure out what Scott did to make his trick work, and a few more to realize that he can’t fully prevent it happening again. Centuries of Grassi archmages have thrown their power and expertise into designing, weaving, and maintaining the wards, but they’ve concentrated on blocking harmful intent and scrying. They don’t adequately deal with spells disguised as diplomatic overtures within the protocols, ones gifting ‘improvements’ to existing household weaves.

The life imp? Simply a tactical reapplication and acceleration of the recycling spells used by Mitch’s staff to reclaim materials from items no longer in use. He doesn’t want to admit it, but he’s fucking impressed by Scott’s ability to translate Hoying conjurations into deft modifications of Grassi-designed weaves. Not to mention the asshole’s creativity in coming up with the idea in the first place.

However, Mitch will wager that generations of Hoying archmages have also failed to foresee this combination of what both sides believed to be incompatible magics, and now that he knows where to start...

He wins that bet with himself two days later. He can’t incorporate changes that cause pain, nor anything that might lead to rebellion against Scott’s reign, but since diplomatic negotiation is expected to come with a side of manipulation and a dash of lying, there’s little to stop well planned trickery, as long as he takes the time to weave respect for the ritualistic nature of conjuring into his modifications.

Say, for example, weaving an instruction that convinces one of a household’s basic upkeep daemons, in this case the one that keeps the clothing of every resident in good repair, to also increase the transparency of each garment proportional to the amount of magic cast while wearing it.

And if that weave is set to occur on what just so happens to be the Solstice, a day Vesca traditionally celebrates with parades of conjured spirits, each larger and more entertaining than the last, the most impressive of which is of course held just outside the gates of Castle Hoying?

Well, now that’s a party.

 

***

 

Mitch doesn’t think much of it when his seamstress confirms that yes, it does look like he’s gained weight, except to wonder how bad her day has been going that she can’t muster the usual degree of politeness customary for an important client, say, the sovereign of her magedom. She looks as taken aback by her words as he is when she apologizes, so he waves it away with a consoling smile and a plan to cut back on the jam at breakfast.

Esther telling him that no, she doesn’t have time to talk to him this morning, is abrupt and outside the deference he’s used to receiving from his courtiers, even old friends. But between trying to work out how to overcome the war’s stalemate and planning her wedding, she’s quite stressed, so again he dismisses it.

However, it’s when he’s having lunch with Kevin that he realizes something’s not quite right.

“I can’t decide between the blue or the burgundy tunic for Esther’s wedding. What do you think?”

Kevin holds up a hand and swallows his mouthful of chicken. “I have no idea why you’re asking, since you’ll wear what you like regardless. And even if you did listen to me, I literally couldn't care less.”

Mitch’s mouth drops open, because while he has a few people in his life that he’s willing to tolerate that level of bluntness from, and Kevin is one of them, it’s _beyond_ out of character for Kevin to actually take advantage of it in such a casual way. “Excuse me?”

Kevin blinks, confused. “I have no idea why I said that, magus.”

Oh, _now_ he slaps on the ‘magus’. “Did you mean it?”

“Absolutely,” Kevin says, and then claps a hand over his mouth.

Mitch leans back in his chair, frowning. “Who cooks a better roast chicken, Chef Avi or your mother?”

“Avi,” Kevin says without hesitation, and then cringes. “Please don’t tell her I said that.”

Crap. “You can’t lie to me, can you? Not even a little bit?”

He looks confused. “I don’t know?”

“Do you like my shoes?”

“They’re horrifying, magus,” he blurts, and then drops his head into his hand. “By the Lady, I absolutely can’t.”

Great.

It takes Mitch twelve hours to locate the water imp that’s altered the castle’s loyalty charms, during which Mitch learns far, far more than he ever wanted about his people’s true thoughts.

 

***

 

Mitch, sadly, couldn’t arrange an invite to Consort-Father Richard’s sixtieth birthday party, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t there in spirit.

He wishes he’d been able to see Scott’s face when he discovered his harpsichord stuck to his ballroom ceiling, courtesy of a confused furniture-repair daemon. And what his expression morphed into when the daemon abruptly realized its error and let go.

Mitch has always been partial to dissonant cacophonies. He bets this one was _amazing_.

 

***

 

Mitch wakes up one morning to yelling outside his windows. “Get away! Mine! Go somewhere else!”

What the fuck?

“Mine! Go somewhere else! Go away!”

He drags himself out of bed and opens one of the windows, but there’s no one in the bailey below who looks like they’ve been arguing, just a few servants, guards, and townsfolk going about their early morning business. He checks for magic, but nothing he can see is glowing more than it should.

He shakes his head and decides it must have been the remnant of a dream. Until the next morning, when it’s louder despite being even earlier.

“Fuuuuck me! Hey hey hey! Fuuuuck me!”

Maybe Mitch is losing his mind?

“Fuuuuck me! Hey hey hey! Fuuuuck me!”

Mitch stumbles over to the window again, shoving the casements open so quickly he scares a bird away from its nest. But there’s still no one yelling below, just a startled guard looking up at him.

“Are you alright, magus?” she asks.

“Yes, fine. Uh...did you hear anyone yelling about...um…” Hopefully she’ll get what he means. She looks around twelve and even though Mitch knows she has to be older than that to be a guard, he’s still not comfortable elaborating.

Unfortunately, she just looks confused. “About what?”

Guess that’s a no then. “Uh, never mind. It’s fine.”

He asks Kevin, whose bedchamber is on the same side of the keep as Mitch’s, a floor below, but Kevin heard nothing unusual either day.

The following morning, it happens again.

“Fuuuuck me! Hey hey hey! Fuuuuck me!”

But this time there’s a second voice. “Maaaybe. Dance more. Show me. Maaaybe.

“Pretty!” says the first voice. “I’m very pretty. Fuuuuck me!”

“Maaaybe pretty. Dance more. Show me pretty. Maaaybe.”

It’s only when Mitch stalks over to the window, shoving it open one more time, that he understands what’s actually happening.

This time two birds take off from nearby ledges, one from the nest he noticed yesterday, one from a little further away.

“Come back later!” the closest one shrieks. “More dance! More pretty! Fuuuuck me!”

He can understand the birds. The territorial, springtime, twitterpated, horny fucking _birds_. Mitch looks around and finds a life imp giggling at him from behind her little green hands.

“Enhanced translation spell. Clever,” he tells her, not without a hint of admiration. “Tell your creator I hate both you and him.”

Judging by the smirk on her face before she pops away, she doesn’t entirely believe him.

He no longer entirely believes himself.

 

***

 

Mitch is incredibly proud of the raincloud he manages to summon and tie to Scott’s aura so it follows him around. The spellwork isn’t just an improvement to Vescan weather control spells, but is close enough to being a conjuration in its own right that his father would have freaked, and that somehow makes it even sweeter.

Thoughts of Scott spending the entire day and half the night -- which is when Mitch’s tether snaps as Scott finally figures out how to banish it -- with water dripping all over him, help a lot too.

 

***

 

A glitter bomb goes off at Esther and Darien’s wedding. An orange and purple glitter bomb.

Even with the atrocious color choice, it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as bad if Esther hadn’t been so startled that she accidentally blew up her own wedding cake, too.

 

***

 

Changing the entire water supply of Castle Hoying into vodka is fun, until Mitch wakes up with the worst hangover of his life the following morning. He’s pretty sure Scott got completely tanked just to spite him; it’s not like he wouldn’t have known what was happening.

His brain hurts even more when he tries to mentally resolve whether Scott intentionally allowing himself to be harmed by Mitch’s prank so that the harm would reflect could also be considered to be causing Mitch harm and thus reflect back again on Scott.

 

***

 

It turns out the castle’s kofi supply has vanished. _All_ of it.

Mitch _really_ hopes Scott’s experiencing double the hangover.

 

***

 

Arranging for Scott’s braies to disappear every time he takes them off is petty but amusing. As is the thought of him having to go naked under his trousers once they’re all gone.

 

***  


Mitch is less impressed when his own braies all mysteriously appear waving high on every flagpole in Ananassa.

Although it turns out being naked under his pants is kind of liberating.  
  
***

 

Randomizing the appearance of all the food in the Castle Hoying kitchens seems like a good idea at the time. The weave was particularly complex and Mitch stayed up all night completing it.

He’s a bit pissed off that his kitchen spy never mentioned that Scott can’t tolerate butterfruit, though. Or that biting into one while it resembled a steak would have a truly unfortunate effect on his digestive system, which _of course_ counts as harm.

 

***

 

It’s the point at which his toilet starts to confide its disappointment with his life choices to him that Mitch decides enough is enough.

 

**To be continued**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My thanks to [Ehcimocs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ehcimocs), who came up with many of the evil ideas in this chapter. She's both ingenious and terrifying in her prank creativity.


	6. Chapter 6

It takes only two weeks to arrange the summit, which is not a great reflection of their priorities, considering that it’s being routinely inconvenienced and humiliated that actually gets them both to the negotiating table rather than the previous full year of outright war.

That’s not precisely fair, Mitch supposes. It’s also that they’re more evenly matched; Vesca no longer controls all three border leys. They both have something to lose from continued fighting, and enough to gain from a ceasefire for it to be worth discussing.

But relief from constant annoyance is definitely on Mitch’s list of things that count as ‘enough to gain’.

And so here they are, meeting in a large, opulent tent on neutral ground near the middle border ley, in between the Ananassan troops currently holding it and the Vescan ones wanting it back. 

Mitch arrives first as the nominal host. His people have done a nice job; the meeting space is on defensible ground, with room for both delegations and their guards to be able to camp within sight but not easy reach of each other. The tent itself has all the necessary amenities -- food, drink, light, warmth, copies of previous treaties and international precedent, ink and parchment, alcohol -- to keep two rival monarchs comfortable without being ostentatious. He weaves another waterproofing spell around the whole thing, just in case. The spring rains are fairly heavy this year.

The Vescan party arrives not long afterwards, pausing outside, no doubt so Scott can examine the whole thing to ensure there’s no trap. Once that’s done, his master healer, war mage, and several lesser courtiers enter first, bowing politely but not differentially to Mitch and their counterparts, as is appropriate.

And then Scott himself comes in, and the first thing Mitch notes is that he’s so tall. Mitch knows this, intellectually. But it wasn’t as readily apparent when Scott was being half-carried and seen only through a scrypool, or while he was riding a fucking elemental. 

He’s wearing a black cloak with the hood up, covering most of his blond hair, although both are damp from the rain. He pauses in the doorway, surveying the room before his eyes settle on Mitch. He nods acknowledgment and reaches up, lowering his hood with both hands. 

Those sources of Mitch’s that said Scott was gorgeous? Did not do him justice. Mitch has never been so instantaneously or so significantly affected by someone in this way.

He needs to ignore it, to not let it distract him. He closes his eyes to try to center himself, and is pleased when it works well enough for him to nod to the waiting bard that it’s time to start.

After offering refreshments and seats to both parties, the bard thankfully takes to the center of the room, and begins recounting the various exploits, both real and exaggerated, of each of their family lineages.

It’s traditional, and helpful for negotiations where both parties may need a recap of the history and the stakes being considered by the other. However, in this case it’s long, boring, useless, and something Mitch belatedly wishes he’d put his foot down about when Kevin presented the order of business. 

Kevin himself is listening attentively; Mitch sometimes wonders if he’d been the kind of student Mitch’s tutor tried to punish Mitch into being without success. In contrast, Scott’s healer Kirstin is flipping through pages of her notes, perhaps preparing arguments for the negotiations to come rather than listening. Esther does appear to be listening, although Mitch would stake a lot of silver that she’s actually plotting out six different contingency plans in case things goes south. 

And Scott...Scott is watching Mitch. Intently. And not like he’s trying to figure out how to defeat him, but instead how to bed him.

Mitch looks away, but something twists low in his gut, and he realizes he’s half hard. That he’s been half hard since Scott walked in. 

So much for not letting himself get distracted.

Huh. The reason why so many of their pranks involved the removal of underwear or getting each other naked is suddenly becoming all too clear. He  _ wants  _ Scott. He doesn’t just find him attractive, he wants to fuck him. Wants to be held down and fucked  _ by _ him. Wants to mark up all his pretty skin and bite his pretty neck and writhe on his pretty cock.

Shit. This is not what he should be thinking about right now. It’s ridiculous. They barely know each other, have only directly communicated once in a decade, and have legitimately been trying to murder each other for a full year. Admiration for someone’s looks, power, creativity, resourcefulness, and intelligence hardly makes a good basis for …okay, actually those are pretty decent starting points for wanting someone, come to think of it.  

But  _ still _ , this is not the time. His throat feels dry, so he swallows heavily. Tries to clear it and then swallows again. That doesn’t work sufficiently, so he wets his lips, biting down on the bottom one until it hurts to try to refocus himself.

There’s a weird, choked-off noise from Scott’s side of the table, and when Mitch looks up, it’s to find those blue eyes still staring at him intently.

Scott’s pink tongue darts out and white teeth follow, biting down just like Mitch’s did. The sting of MItch’s own lip throbs again. 

Oh.  _ Oh. _

“I want to talk to Mitch alone,” Scott says suddenly, interrupting the neverending bard. 

“That’s never going to happen,” Esther scoffs. 

Mitch agrees, but not with Esther. “Everyone out,” he says, standing so his half of the table also does so out of a lifetime of etiquette training. It’s a trick his dad used to pull, and unlike many of his father’s habits, Mitch still finds this one useful. If they’re standing, they’re as good as halfway out the door. 

Scott snorts and stands as well, which of course gets his side of the table up too.

“Magus,” Kevin begins, for once sounding like it’s at strain to keep a respectful, professional tone. “This is a bad idea.” 

Esther nods and points at Kevin. “What he said.”

Kirstin, on the other hand, clearly can’t even be bothered trying for respectful. “You’re being an idiot, Scott.”

Mitch likes her. But that doesn’t stop him from edging toward the door like a dinner host whose guests have missed his first five hints that it’s time to leave. 

“I think we’ll do better working this out between us,” Scott tells her.

Fuck, Mitch really wants to work  _ something _ out between them. 

A peace treaty. He means a peace treaty.

Yes. That.

Eventually, after a few more not-so-hushed exchanges with his master healer, Scott herds his half of the party towards the doorway too, and everyone shuffles out. No one looks happy about it. The bard looks downright distraught.

But then the tent-flaps fall closed and they’re alone.

Scott takes a step towards him, but then pauses, frowning. He starts muttering in his strange magespeak, and Mitch begins to think Kevin was right and he’s miscalculated. The feeling doesn’t get better when three spirits appear, looking for all the world like human soldiers with the exception of their wings and translucency.

Seraphs. Mitch’s favorite.

Mitch opens his channels, preparing to defend himself. But Scott just snorts again and says, “Guard the tent, please. Keep everyone out but notify me if there’s an emergency.”

The three beings nod and then fade away into thin air. Mitch flips his vision to sparksight to find them still there, winding and threading themselves into a shield and then expanding outward until they pass through the tents walls, surrounding them from the outside.

His father would have found it repugnant, an abomination, but Mitch just finds it…intriguing.

He casts his own shield then, uncomfortable with the thought of Scott alone having control over who enters. He’s strangely self-conscious as Scott watches him, wondering if his weaves are as interesting to Scott as Scott’s conjurations are to him, or if they’re just foreign puzzles to be overcome. 

He weaves the shield spell closed, setting it to align with the canvas of the the tent above and around them and just under the soil line below. 

Scott’s still staring at him, although after a moment his gaze drops down to trace Mitch’s body before returning to his face. “You locked me in a box.”

Mitch winces, because yeah, he did. He’s not proud of himself. He steps towards him, however. “You hid a deadly snake in my library.”

Scott’s expression flickers. Regret, maybe? Or just annoyance that the plan failed. “You smashed my great-grandmother’s harpsichord.”

Yes he did. And he definitely doesn’t regret it. “I’m sure it sounded as beautiful when it fell as birds do trying to get laid in the morning.”

Scott grins, the pretty asshole, and now he’s the one to step forward, putting them toe to toe. He’s impossibly tall from this angle and Mitch has to tilt his head back to maintain eye contact. He’s completely -- and disconcertingly -- turned on by the physical intimidation, despite knowing they’re equally matched. 

Scott licks his lips again, and Mitch is so distracted watching his tongue that he almost misses his next words: “Did you enjoy leaving me naked in front of most of my populace?”

Mitch hums and lets the corner of his mouth curve up into a smirk. “I was honoring Vescan tradition. A parade of beasts, isn’t it?” He lets his gaze flick down for a second, brings his hand up to trace it down Scott’s chest. “Were they impressed?”

Scott seems to snap right about then -- finally -- and he grabs at Mitch, one hand on the back of his head and the other at his waist. He crushes their lips together and Mitch lets him, burying his hands in the fabric of Scott’s tunic, dragging him closer, tighter against him.

Scott bites down, hard, and Mitch moans at the sting, only for Scott to pull back with a hiss a couple of seconds later. His hand comes up to rub his own lip and it’s only then that it fully hits Mitch that the oath will reflect every bite, pinch, scratch, and bruise. 

Heat coils low in his gut and he can feel himself hardening further, more so when Scott refocuses on him, something dark and almost feral in his eyes.

And then it’s Mitch pulling at him, hands in his hair yanking him down for a kiss, moaning as he can feel it tugging along his own scalp. He frees one of his hands and shows off with a quick weave, undoing all the toggles of Scott’s jacket and tunic with a flick of his fingers and a mutter into his mouth. It reveals the broad expanse and lean lines of Scott’s torso and Mitch takes a moment to admire the warm skin now his to explore. 

There’s a flurry of grabbing and pulling then, both manual and magic, and Mitch soon finds himself sprawled on his back, a hastily summoned pile of blankets beneath him, a beautifully naked archmage on top.

Mitch has never been more turned on. It’s a serious problem. 

Scott, if he also thinks it’s a problem, doesn’t seem to care because his hands and mouth are  _ everywhere _ . Smoothing down Mitch’s sides, pinching at his nipples and thighs, nipping and caressing. At one point he sucks hard on Mitch’s scarred collarbone, bringing his teeth into play, and the sensation goes straight to Mitch’s dick, especially when a bruise appears on Scott’s own collarbone, next to his near-identical scar. This naturally leads to Mitch digging his nails into Scott’s shoulders to try to ground himself, which leads to Mitch’s shoulders stinging as well, which leads straight back to his dick…

“I want to fuck you,” Scott says into Mitch’s neck, grinding against Mitch’s thigh in the most exquisite way. “You’re so beautiful and powerful and fucking unconquerable. I want to pin you down and fuck you until we both come screaming.” 

Mitch is not against this idea, but if Scott thinks it’ll qualify as some form of conquering, he’s sadly mistaken. He channels a bit of power, ignoring Scott’s hum as he must feel it gathering, and then weaves himself a strength enhancement and uses it to flip them over. He settles himself astride Scott’s lap and grinds down. “You can definitely fuck me. But we’ll see who pins who.”

Scott’s eyes darken and he squeezes Mitch’s hips, rocking up into him. Then he raises his right hand, palm up. “Watch.”

Mitch doesn’t expect to be impressed, but humors him, eyes on his hand.

“No,  _ magus _ .” The mocking emphasis on his title makes him glance at Scott’s face to find that his eyes have the telltale vacancy that gives away the use of sparksight. “ _ Watch _ .”

Mitch shifts his vision, uncomfortable, as Scott starts to incant. He finds conjuration intriguing and wants to learn more, and he’s sure he’ll get used to...having company if they continue whatever it is they’re currently doing. But for now, he doesn’t really want to see whatever spirit Scott conjures to do his bidding while he’s naked. He’s happier pretending they’re alone.

However, if Scott specifically wants to show him something, then Mitch will watch it.

He can’t understand the words, of course, but once he’s watching the magic, he’s shocked to follow the threads of a simple, albeit clumsy, weave, which ends with the appearance of a small pot of lubricant in Scott’s hand.

“You…” Holy shit. “You cast directly?” 

Scott smirks. “You think you’re the only one who can experiment with crossing the line, Cloud Boy?”

Mitch laughs and leans down, settling on his elbows so he can thread his fingers through Scott’s hair again and yank. “Did you like the cloud? Did it make you all  _ wet _ for me?”

That gets a groan and Scott’s teeth back on his skin, identical marks appearing on his own a moment later. And then Scott is pushing him back upright and tugging at his thighs to pull him higher. “ _ You _ need to be wet for  _ me _ .”

“Mmm hmm,” Mitch agrees, reaching down to stroke his own cock. “This time.”

Scott freezes for a second, fingers mid-scoop in the lube, and then concedes. “This time.”

Mitch isn’t sure whether it’s the confirmation that this might not be the only time they do this, or the confirmation that Scott’s open to turning things around, but it makes his hand involuntarily tighten around his cock and a moan leave his mouth, and it all feels so good that he almost misses when Scott slips a long finger inside him.

Not for long though, because Scott’s  _ good _ at this. It doesn’t take long for him to work in another, and then another. Not that Mitch is complaining, because he doesn’t have the patience to draw this out either. He lets Scott continue for only another moment or two, and then pulls his hand away, resettling himself over Scott’s cock and only taking a second to weave a quick health protection spell before taking as much of him in as possible in one long glide.

Mitch hisses at the intrusion, head tilting back as he shudders at the burn. It stings, but it’s So. Fucking. Good. 

Scott's mouth drops open and then his eyes and teeth clench shut, hands clamping down on Mitch’s hips, forcing him still when Mitch starts to rock back up and keep things going. “ _ Wait _ .”

What,  _ no _ . “Why?” It comes out as a whine rather than a demand, but that’s fine because Mitch means it either way.

Scott’s eyes are still clenched shut. “Because while you get all the nice fullness and prostate pressure, I just have the damn  _ burn _ .”

Oh.  _ Oh _ . Mitch hadn’t even thought... “That’s so  _ hot _ .”

Scott laughs weakly, and keeps holding everything still. He has the audacity to shush Mitch when he starts to wiggle again, so Mitch pinches his nipple. Hard.

And oooh, yes. It reflects and Mitch’s back arches of its own accord. “Holy  _ shit _ .”

So he does it again. And then again. There’s a delay between Scott’s gasp after each one and Mitch’s, but it’s so, so amazing.

“Fuck,” Scott says, voice low and gravelly as he finally starts to move. There’s no pain anymore, just the beautiful slide of a fat cock filling him up and pressing against all the right places. Still, Mitch makes a mental note to try going a little too quickly when it’s his turn to top. See if it really is the lack of balance between pleasure and sting that makes the difference, or if Scott’s pain tolerance is just lower.

It doesn’t matter now though, what matters is the ride Mitch is taking and how good it all feels. He speeds up, both in circling his hips and stroking his cock, and enjoys the moan it pulls from Scott, the way his hands tighten on Mitch’s hip and thigh. He’s going to leave marks and Mitch is here for it. He absently smooths his free hand over Scott’s chest, enjoying the warmth and shape of him before returning his fingers to his nipple to pinch him again. And fuck yes, that feels amazing, the minor bit of pain keeping him grounded.

But it seems Scott’s had enough of laying quietly, because he smacks Mitch’s ass -- ooh, yes  _ magus _ \-- hisses as he too bears the slap, and then grabs his wrists and uses his greater natural strength to roll them over once again. 

Mitch lands on his back, breathless and hopelessly turned on. He could free himself if he wanted, break Scott’s hold with a quick twist of a weave, but he doesn’t. Instead, he arches against him, winds his legs around him, rocks up and into every thrust Scott’s pounding into him. 

But what he does do is allow his magic to trickle from his channels without guidance, lets it spark and glow across his skin, sending warmth and tiny shocks across Scott’s and enjoying the prickles it reflects back on him. Scott groans deep in his chest, no doubt feeling the flow of power itself as well as its manifestations, and takes Mitch’s mouth in a harsh kiss, further emphasizing the sparks that dance between their lips.

It doesn’t take long after that, especially when Scott’s magic also joins in. Mitch finishes with a high-pitched whine as Scott’s power flows over his cock, digs his fingernails into Scott’s and thus his own shoulders, feels his come dripping and smearing across their stomachs between them. Scott fucks him through it, following soon after with a final grind of his hips and a muffled yell into their kiss. 

Scott nips and sucks on his lips one more time and then reins in his magic before pulling out, flopping down on his back to one side. They lie there, spent and trying to calm their heart rates and breathing, both staring at the ceiling.

It’s strangely silent, now that they’re done. Serious. Mitch is torn between wondering how what just happened actually happened, and wondering how it took them so long to get here. 

Eventually, in a voice is barely more than a whisper, Scott says, “You helped your father try to kill me.”

And there it is, the daemon in the corner.

“I didn’t,” Mitch replies, turning his head to face Scott’s judgement, even though Scott himself is still staring at the ceiling. “I didn’t know he’d intercepted my letter. I was just trying to talk to you.”

Scott’s expression twists. “He murdered my  _ mother _ .”

“I know. I’m sorry, I know.” Mitch takes a deep breath. “I’m not condoning what he did, but she’d already tried to assassinate me, after all. He shouldn’t have retaliated the way he did, but he saw it as defending his family.”

Scott finally turns to him, eyes narrowed, jaw clenching. “That’s a fucking  _ lie _ .”

By the Lady, Scott doesn’t know? “It’s not.” Mitch reaches out hesitantly, laying his palm on Scott’s bicep. “I promise it’s not. When we got back from your castle after their negotiations failed? There was a seraph in my bedchamber.” He curls his lip, ruefully. “I can still feel the wind as its sword slashed over my head whenever I think about it.”

Scott stares at him for a long moment. “What color was the sword?”

Why the hell--? “Blue. It was a glowing sky blue.”

Scott’s eyes close and his face turns back to the ceiling. Then he starts to laugh. A bitter, unhappy laugh. “Hell of a job we did not continuing our parents’ stupid bullshit, huh?”

Mitch snorts. He’s so fucking right. “But we could end it now. For real this time.”

Scott takes a deep breath and nods. He’s quiet for a moment, and then reopens his eyes. “Vesca needs more ambient magic than I’ll be able to provide if you keep both border leys you currently hold. If you release the central one, I won’t attempt to occupy it. It can remain neutral and passively benefit both our lands. You keep the other one you currently control, I’ll keep the one I do. In a year, we’ll both have more power than either of our families have averaged while at war, and the neutral ley will mark the border going forward.”

Mitch had hoped to keep the second ley he’d captured, but if securing one and allowing the other side to keep two had been a viable solution for either nation, peace could have been achieved decades ago. “Agreed, on one condition,” Mitch says, and is immediately horrified by his own near-insinuation. “Nevermind, no condition. I just agree.”

Scott twists partially upright, resting his weight on his elbow to look down at Mitch. “What condition?” 

“I-- it was a joke. Nothing I meant seriously. I didn’t realize how bad it would sound until it was almost out my mouth.” Like  _ really _ bad. “I would never try to hold peace or anything else hostage to—“

“Mitch,” Scott interrupts, sounding exasperated. “What condition?”

Shit. “Um, that we keep fucking?”

Scott blinks and then grins, following it up by reaching over to pinch Mitch’s ass, hissing as the twinge of pain obviously affects him as well. “Oh,  _ hell yes _ .”

 

***

 

The mutual grinning lasts about three more minutes, until one of Scott’s shield seraphs reforms itself at the foot of their makeshift bed. Mitch can’t help but reflexively yelp and grab for the blankets, much to Scott’s apparent amusement. 

The seraph says something in Scott’s magespeak. Mitch can’t understand, but given Scott’s lack of immediate panic, it doesn’t seem like a battle has broken out between their armies or anything else too horrifying while they’ve been...negotiating.

It’s when Scott flushes bright red, groaning and dropping his face into his hands that Mitch grows concerned. “What?”

Scott just groans again.

“If that was supposed to reassure me that nothing’s wrong, it failed.”

Scott waves his hand, and the seraph fades back into the air. “Our healers wanted us to know that while they’re very impressed we could collaborate on shielding, they’d prefer if we also conjured up some soundproofing next time because it’s a fucking  _ tent _ .”

Well, shit.

 

**To be concluded**


	7. Chapter 7

It’s surprisingly easy to pull two magedoms out of a war when both sides are fully willing to compromise and work together and when almost the entirety of both populations agrees. There are a few malcontents, mostly mercenary soldiers who will no longer profit, zealots on both sides who can’t accept the other’s magical style as legitimate, and finally a bordertown where the majority of the economy is built around smuggling. But otherwise, everyone seems optimistic at the prospect of a lasting peace for the first time in over a century. 

Mitch could have done without knowing about the song the bard at the summit wrote to commemorate their unique negotiating style though. Particularly when it’s being sung in every tavern, hall, and bawdy house in both Vesca and Ananassa inside of a month. He can’t go anywhere without hearing it and it’s driving him crazy.

And that’s before Scott starts drunkenly adding more accurate verses on his newly repaired harpsichord.

 

***

 

It turns out prostate stimulation and the pleasure of being filled does  _ a lot _ to offset the discomfort of a rushed fuck, and Mitch never makes the mistake of thinking otherwise again.

 

***

 

Unsurprisingly, Consort-Father Richard isn’t fond of Mitch, at least not to start. But slowly, through repeated exposure every time Mitch visits Castle Hoying and in witnessing the increasing happiness of his son, Richard mellows towards him. He never quite loses his discomfort when Mitch weaves in front of him, but he’s polite and grows better at hiding it as time goes on and Mitch can live with that.

Mitch makes a rare break from tradition in sending a letter to his own parents in exile, sharing the news that Ananassa is at peace and that he and Scott are involved. He doesn’t ask for or expect their blessing, but something inside him wants it all the same.

His spell reports they received it, but he doesn’t hear back.

He can live with that, too.

 

***

 

It doesn’t seem like spanking someone when he’ll feel every strike just as hard would be pleasurable, but it turns out it really, really is. 

So is the reverse.

 

***

 

There is also something intensely erotic about having a well-defined set of his own tooth marks reflected high on his left shoulder blade. 

 

***

 

However, his foot randomly exploding with pain because he left his shoes in the middle of the floor again and his lover tripped over them and rammed his toes into the corner of the bedframe is substantially less so.

 

***

 

It doesn’t take Mitch anywhere near as long to get used to various sprites, imps, and daemons popping in and out of existence to give him a message, bring him a sandwich, or tie him to a bed as he would have thought.

Though holding Scott down with nothing but the strength of his own weaves still remains his favorite. Scott’s too, because apparently submitting to what he was taught was dirty and wrong his entire childhood gets him off like a fucking firework.

 

***

 

Mitch’s remaining border ley falls loyal to him a mere ten months after he occupied it. The early rush of magic is more than he needs to sustain Ananassa, and with Vesca also prospering alongside it, the land and everything on it start to truly thrive. 

 

***

 

Scott proposes on the anniversary of the summit by sending Mitch a beautifully crafted infinity belt in an alternating pattern of Ananassan silver and Vescan gold. The artistry and fit are amazing, and Mitch can’t stop admiring how he looks wearing it in the mirror. After quite a few minutes of preening, he slips into sparksight to examine the spellwork and promptly bursts into tears. Scott’s woven it. All of it. There’s not a hint of conjuration anywhere near it and it’s fucking  _ perfect _ .

Poor Scott is left hanging for an entire day though, because that’s how long it takes Mitch to figure out how to conjure up and control a life elemental to appropriately reflect his level of  _ yes _ .

 

***

 

Mitch should probably be mad at Esther for the whole glitter bomb retribution thing, but frankly Scott deserved it and at least they managed to save the cake.

 

***

 

“How the fuck did this _ happen _ ?” Scott whines, six months after their wedding.

If anyone else asked that question, Mitch would laugh his ass off because  _ seriously _ ? But it’s Scott asking, and because it’s Scott, Mitch  _ knows _ that the physical act required for the spell to take this way hasn’t been done in quite some time, specifically to avoid the possibility of causing this outcome. He  _ knows  _ it. He was  _ there _ .

“Maybe it was the blood oath?” Kirstie asks, without looking up from her parchments. Mitch is pretty sure she’s not reading so much as trying to avoid eye contact. 

Scott looks indignant. “I did not  _ harm _ him with this!”

No. No, he did not. Mitch was there for that too, and while there was whining, sighing, pleading, and finally screaming while Scott was...enacting the ritualistic aspects of the spell with him, there was definitely no harm done. 

Kevin looks pensive. “I mean, you did technically cast parasitic magic on him. The spell leeches some of the target’s power to sustain itself. That could be perceived as a harm, magus, even if we don’t usually think of it that way.”

“Exactly.” Kirstie nods. 

“It was consensual!” Scott yells.

Okay, that argument is the stupidest thing Scott’s ever said, given that the massive hickey on Mitch’s neck was also originally and very consensually sucked into Scott’s. Not to mention the scratches down both of their backs, the fingerprint-shaped bruises scattered all over their hips, and the leftover sting still twinging in their asses whenever they move. Consent very clearly has nothing to do with how the oath works and never has. Mitch cocks a disbelieving eyebrow and Scott has the decency to blush.

Kirstie finally looks up at them both, setting her elbows on the desk and resting her chin in her palms. “Look at it this way. You’ll get that pesky heir issue sorted out all at once for both bloodlines. That’s reason to celebrate, right?”

Scott still looks like he’s found more reasons to panic than celebrate, which Mitch finds relatable. He also looks like he’s going to throw up, which, frankly, is even more relatable.

Kirstie grins at their expressions, leaning back in her chair and clapping her hands together. “Twin heir archmages! Wow, are you two ever going to have your hands full!”

Scott narrows his eyes at her and Mitch can practically hear him planning out what imp’s going to be disturbing her sleep every night for the next year and a half.

Oh, fuck. There’s going to be two impish humans disturbing  _ their _ sleep for at  _ least  _ the next year and a half. Probably more like for a decade. 

Kevin frowns, tilting his head in thought. “I don’t think they can be considered twins, despite the simultaneous conception. Two seperate gestations, after all.” 

“Right, “ Mitch says, steadily feeling a headache building. “Because ensuring we use the right terminology is what’s important here. Not freaking out over a surprise extra pregnancy.”

Scott slumps into a chair and drops his face into his hands. “How did this happen?” he repeats, more quietly this time.

Kevin pats him on the shoulder. “The Lady works in mysterious ways.” He pauses and then grins. “You did bring it on yourselves.”

Scott groans. “This is not what thirteen-year-old me had in mind.”

“Was any of it?” Mitch can’t resist asking. 

“Why yes, Mitchell,” Scott says, lifting his head to better glare at him. “As a child, I completely predicted everything that’s transpired, including assassination attempts, years of warfare, running another archmage’s underwear up a flagpole because I can’t kill him, peace treaties through fornication, and that sound you make in the back of your throat when I suck on your cock.”

“Welp,” Kevin says, slapping his hands on his knees and standing up. “You two are going to make great parents. I’m gonna to go do a thing. Coming, Kirstie?”

“Actually, I’m kind of interested in hearing more about the whole sound in the back of the throa--” she cuts herself off when all three of them glare at her. “Fine, I’m going.”

“Are you really so upset that we’ll be having two instead of one right away?” Mitch asks quietly, once they’re alone.

Scott’s expression softens and he opens his arms to let Mitch settle into his lap. “Upset? No, I want them. More like scared I don’t know what I’m doing. Scared I’ll be a shit father twice over. Scared I won’t be able to protect you while the spell siphons your power because now it’s taking mine, too.”

Oh. Mitch was right there with him on the first two, but hadn’t got as far as realizing the last one yet. It’s likely just paranoia talking; the two of them together will still be far stronger than any individual archmage even when the spell’s effect peaks. But he understands Scott’s concern on a visceral level now that he’s aware of the issue. 

Not much they can do about it now, though, so it’s just a matter of coming to terms with it. He leans into the warm chest behind him, letting his control slip a bit just to feel the reassurance of his magic reacting with Scott’s. 

It feels as good as it always does for about thirty seconds before Scott whimpers softly under his breath. Mitch turns to ask what’s wrong, but then a wave of nausea hits him. 

“Seriously?”

Scott nods, miserable. 

Mitch sighs and pulls his magic back in, grateful but also annoyed when the nausea eases a moment later. Looks like morning sickness is going to take away  _ everything _ fun for a while, and they’ll both suffer when either one of them does anything to trigger it. 

“This is  _ stupid _ ,” Scott moans, burying his face in the back of Mitch’s neck once their stomachs have settled.

Mitch has to laugh. A decade of change, chaos, and fallout all derived from a single damn oath, and _that’s_ the part that’s still true.

 

***

 

**FIN**

 

**Thoughts?**


End file.
